Dead Hours

Somebody's always awake in the dead hours.

Between two and five in the morning, Saltwell County, Mississippi, belongs to the people who can't sleep: night-shift workers, insomniacs, new parents, drivers on an empty Route 41. And to the things that come out to meet them.

A freezer that has to stay at twenty below, no matter what corporate says. A radio station still counting the survivors after its DJ has died. A rideshare app that sends a driver to addresses that won't exist until spring. A smart home that follows its lease to the letter. A sourdough starter that is very, very hungry. And under it all, beneath the bluff above the Lost Pine River, something has been singing in the salt for longer than anyone has been alive to hear it.

These twenty linked stories move from a widow's letters in 1858 to a hospice room at 3:14 a.m. They go from cosmic dread to small-town bargains to the quiet terror of losing the people you love. Read them one at a time, after dark.

And if you hear something in the hallway, don't get up.